What We Are
by solsixtus
Summary: In which an examination of scars leads to a realization.


"Are you completely positive it goes in _vertically_ and not diagonally? The dimensions of this desk seem to point to the latter."

"No, it doesn't."

Robert grunted, sliding to prop himself up on an elbow from under the Tambour desk. "'No, it _doesn't_ go in diagonally', or 'No, it _doesn't_ point to the latter?'"

"It _doesn't_ go in diagonally," Rosalind clarified.

"Hrmm," Robert vocalized, returning back to replacing the panel they'd attached measuring instruments to. The _idea_ was to make it more convenient, but that was looking less likely with each of his attempts.

She heard him mumble something, but it was lost in the bowels of the desk.

"What's that, brother?" She maneuvered around his legs jutting out from under it, bending at the waist to peer at him working below.

"I _said_," he huffed, "I'm just going to fit it in the way I choose, because it's _not_ going in."

From her new angle, she could witness his struggle. Really, though, it shouldn't have taken longer than a few seconds, but ten minutes had already elapsed with her in the chair, Robert on the floor, and a very petulant piece of wood that refused to return to where it belonged.

He gave a sigh of frustration and finally lay on his back, staring up at the desk in defeat. Rosalind gave one too, because there was no excuse for his incompetence. She was going to scold him when she noticed something extraordinarily peculiar.

"Has that always been there?"

"The panel?" he said with a slow exhale.

"_No_," she drawled, "the scar there on your chin."

"Since I was eight. An unfortunate _bicycle_ accident. I scraped it on a-"

"-brick at the foot of the front porch?" she finished for him.

Robert shuffled out from the confines of the desk, eyes wide with astonishment. "You have the same as well?"

She nodded, tilting her chin up so he might see, and he leaned in with boyish excitement.

"Fascinating," he whispered, and the heat of his breath as it brushed against her bared throat made her shiver.

"I imagine you did not get the same scolding from mother as I did._ Damaged goods_, is the direction that went," she murmured, rolling her eyes. The fuss over her attractiveness and worth to a suitor was well-meant, but utterly useless to her. Nor did she care. Mother had given up trying to find someone for her, or rather, someone who would _take_ her, and so had she. She needed no man to prove herself to, especially through the superficial.

"I did not," he admitted.

She glanced back to find him smirking, and his eyes, full of mirth, trailed up to meet hers. This cheekiness of his whenever they discussed their childhood events and he discovering he had lesser punishment from their parents, was something he was picking up on more frequently. She enjoyed it as much as it annoyed her.

Her mouth quirked into a mirroring expression. Robert glanced at her lips then, his smile faltering. He seemed to take note of their proximity, and he drew a slow breath as he stood up straight.

There was something _painful_ that stirred within her when he drew away, finding sudden interest in the coat hanger near the door, and she couldn't quite understand why.

He scratched uncomfortably at the place where his jaw met his neck, and she noticed a fine, white curve on the inside of his wrist.

"What's that there, then, on your arm?" She rolled up the sleeve on her mirroring wrist and displayed for him her matching scar.

Robert's eyes lit up. "Building the first prototype for the magnetic quantum inverter?"

Rosalind smiled. "Cut it on the external exhaust coil. I wonder…"

He recognized the glint in her eye, and finished her thought he shared. "-If we share all scars?"

She hiked her skirt up to her knee, pulling her stockings slightly to show him the permanent reminder of her trip to the beach when she was twelve.

Robert did the same, perhaps, less gracefully with his trousers and socks. "A glass bottle?"

Rosalind furrowed her brow. "A rock."

"A rock?" He crossed his arms, frowning slightly at the floor. "The same scar, but a different cause?"

"Well, that's not too far off from the differences between ourselves we've already found."

"That's true, but-" he trailed off, leaning back to sit on the desk. "This goes back to our discussion on probability. The same event with different elements causing it, but the same conclusion?" He tapped his chin and met her eye again. "Have you any other scars?"

Rosalind tried to recall all her childhood mishaps—there weren't much. She hadn't broken her arm in primary school like he did, or gotten into scuffles. Robert seemed more branded than she. The consequences of his gender, maybe?

"Ah, well, what about this?" she remembered of a burn from a falling lantern.

Faster than he could exhale, she loosened the top buttons of her vest and shirt, and he was glancing at her bare shoulder, a softer version of his own, speckled with the same copper freckles.

Robert averted his eyes. "Rosalind! What _are _you doing?"

She arched an annoyed eyebrow. "Honestly, Robert, it's just my shoulder. Your chivalry is admirable, but wasted on me. I am you. This is your body as much as mine."

He pondered for a moment before slowly returning his eyes back to her, lingering on the exposed flesh. There was a small blemish that he had not noticed before, and he did not have a matching one.

"Yes, well," he cleared his throat, "you forget that I am a man."

"And?" She stood up, crossing the two steps to him. She had difficulty understanding his reasonings sometimes. "There can hardly be fault in finding one's self to be beautiful."

Robert arched an eyebrow of his own, painfully mindful of how close she was. "One also does not _usually_find himself a woman standing partially undressed an arm's length away."

She smirked, amused with the situation. And interested. His reactions to things differed from hers frequently enough to garner her attention. She _itched_ to know why.

"And if one does? How does one respond?"

"_Carefully_," Robert replied.

_Too _carefully, she was quick to notice.

"And how do _you _respond?" she asked, breaking their language.

He tilted his head, eyes so rapt with attention, it nearly paralyzed her.

"The same as _you_, beloved sister."

She blinked, breaking the effect the intensity of his gaze had. He had thrown the question back at her, as if he was equally as curious. She drew a slow breath at the implication.

"Do you presume to say," she started, adjusting the collar of her blouse to cover her shoulder, "that I _understand_ who we are?"

Robert glanced at the motion.

"Yes," he challenged, leaning forward a hairsbreadth. "By your reasoning, your actions are my actions." His tongue darted out to moisten his lips, and she noticed them for the first time—their shape, their nearness.

"Your _thoughts_," he continued more quietly, "_Mine._"

Her thoughts? They were scattered now, replaced with only one; something _new_, something she'd never thought before.

She took his hand gently.

"I know who we are," she whispered.

"Tell me, dear Rosalind," he breathed.

She smiled, never taking her eyes off of his. "_We_ are brilliant. Narcissistic. And most of all…"

She placed his hand on her breast.

"_Curious_."


End file.
